The city of New Iberia is beginning the process of looking into regulating non-food mobile businesses.

The issue was brought up at a City Council meeting last month, when the city administration asked the council about priority ordinances for the city’s legal counsel and ordinance committee to begin looking into.

Under current law, the city has regulations for food trucks that operate within city limits. The regulations include a permit and proof of insurance.

Mayor Freddie DeCourt said Saturday that he wasn’t sure where a new law concerning non-food trucks would go.

“I’m not sure what we’re going to do yet, it’s got to go through the process,” DeCourt said.

Councilwoman Deidre Ledbetter, who heads the ordinance committee, said a proposed ordinance would likely put non-food related mobile businesses on a par with food trucks and mobile food businesses.

“If we have these regulations for food trucks, why wouldn’t we have them for non-food mobile businesses as well?” Ledbetter said Saturday.

DeCourt said a few mobile businesses have expressed interest in setting up shop within the city of New Iberia. Recently, a business that sells flowers was interested in working in New Iberia, which prompted the discussion on the ordinance.

“It won’t just be for flower businesses, we would have to make it apply to everyone,” DeCourt said.

The proposed ordinance comes in tandem with several other ordinances the city government is considering as well.

Two recent ordinances that the city council failed to pass concerned regulating the amount and length of yard sales within the city of New Iberia. The concern came after some residents within the city were conducting “year round yard sales,” according to some members of the council.

The ordinance failed to pass after members of the council expressed concern that the law would restrict too many city residents for problems that were only occurring with a few residents.

Another ordinance that failed to pass concerned requiring dumpsters for commercial storage facilities in New Iberia, which also failed to pass after several commercial storage business owners within New Iberia addressed the city council, saying it was not necessary and there were no problems at their specific businesses.

Along with a non-food mobile business ordinance, the ordinance committee is also considering a noise ordinance that would give the New Iberia Police Department more ability to silence noise complaints. DeCourt said late night noise complaints have been occurring within New Iberia, and the police department has had limited ability to take action against it.

Ledbetter said the ordinance committee would likely begin the process of reviewing and writing ordinance proposals in the summer.

Unlike the previous two ordinances, the council seemed largely supportive of the proposal, as well as the final proposal of an ordinance that would regulate non-food mobile businesses.

The mayor said he had gotten proposals from non-food businesses for mobile homes, and would start researching if the council gave him the go ahead.

The council largely agreed that the mayor should pursue the ordinance.

“If we regulate food trucks we should regulate all types,” Ledbetter said. “It should be across the board.”